richard5933

That's not an arctic blast - that a pleasant spring day. Wind chill this weekend was -30F with actual temps of -14F. Not looking much better through the next week. We've had actual temps down to -20F and colder in the past.

Maybe you've licked the fire risk, but there could still be plenty of reasons to be prepared to make an emergency exit including collision and/or rollover. Good to have a plan and to be practiced in executing it. If you have an emergency exit on one side only, be sure to figure out what you'll do when you have to exit on the other side of the coach or through the roof. For many situations kicking out the windshield is a viable exit plan.

If that's as old as it looks, I wouldn't be surprised if the entire thing was made in that backyard. Not that difficult to put something like that together using basic hand tools. That's how lots of the earlier campers were built.

When our coach was involved in a head-on collision a few years back we were forced to bail out using a side window similar to what you're talking about. It sure looked like a long way down when you look out, but it's not really as bad as it seems. We put our feet out first and grabbed on to the window edge as we lowered ourselves down. By the time we were out and hanging by the window's edge, our feet were only about 2-3 feet off the ground. If you want something to give you more confidence as you climb out, perhaps something like this could be stored in the cabinet next to that window: https://familyrvingmag.com/2013/02/01/rv-escape-ladder/ Would be a good idea to actually practice once or twice, regardless of which method you choose. Put on your sweats and actually give it a go when you have all the time in the world AND someone standing by to lend a hand in case you need it. This way you'll have confidence that you can safely get out should the need ever arise and won't immediately start to panic. Nothing like being prepared and practiced to help get you through an otherwise very difficult situation.

Here's a quote from the TSD website: Our fee is 10% of the savings per gallon and up to 15% for commercial. So if the retail cost is $3.00 per gallon and our cost is $2.50 per gallon, your fee will be 5 cents per gallon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Crestline

I think it would be a blast to pull into a campground with one of those. But then again I'm partial to vintage vehicles.

My method is to plan the route I want first, then try and find campgrounds along my preferred route. I'll usually bring up the general area on Google Maps, and then in the search box type "campgrounds near here" and see what pops up. Then I cross reference to my usual discounts, etc, etc. On occasion I have changed my route due to lack of suitable campgrounds. Any particular reason you are routing through Chicago and into Wisconsin? As much as I think Wisconsin is a great place to visit, you're going out of your way if Iowa is your destination. A couple of suggestions: In Belvidere IL there is a small airstrip - Poplar Grove Airport. They have an airport museum which is part of Harvest Host. This would make a great stopover point as you head north and is well worth the time if you have any interest in vintage planes. The airport is very welcoming and you can actually walk from hanger to hanger and talk with the vintage plane owners. In Rockford there is a great Japanese garden - Anderson Gardens - which is well worth a visit as well. From Rockford you can head west on US 20 all the way to Dubuque and totally avoid the traffic and congestion in Chicagoland. Or, you can continue north on I-39 towards Janesville and on to Madison WI where there are a few campgrounds. If you're going through Iowa in the summer Davenport has a great street festival in downtown, and just north of there is Le Claire which makes for a great stop over point as well. They allow overnight parking in the lot along the Mississippi and you can go visit the Antique Archeology store while you're there.

Some companies make a few varieties of a particular tire model in the same sizes - sometimes the difference is in the load rating and sometimes something else. You've got to read the fine print carefully. Here's a link to Hankook's tire book with all the specs: https://www.hankooktire.com/us/files/technical-manual/2021_TBR_catalog.pdf

Check out listings for commercial tire dealers near you. They may not have a 'lift', but as mentioned above all they need to be able to do is change the tires and all commercial tire dealers will be able to do that.

Had the year wrong by a few... 1982 Irish Fling 19th Annual Summer International Convention South Bend Indiana July 20-22. Are there photos of this convention available anywhere?

Speaking of old FMCA stuff, anyone have any information on a rally held in the 70s called the Irish Fling? There is still a sticker on my bus from when it attended this rally and I'd love to see if there are any photos of it there.

Check the voltage output of your onboard charging system at the various levels (bulk, float, etc) to make sure that the levels are in sync with what your particular batteries call for. Charging at too high or too low a voltage will shorten the life of your batteries. My coach has 24v chassis batteries and 12v house batteries. There are separate chargers for each bank, both 4-stage smart chargers. They are plugged in at all times unless we're on the road or dry camping, and when we are on the road for more than a few hours I use a battery-to-battery smart charger to keep the house batteries topped off. They've been plugged in this way going on 4 years now, and they still perform just as well as they did 4 years ago when we dry camp. Your coach is from 2003. How old are the batteries? If the house batteries are leaking, then obviously they have problems. Is this due to them freezing? Overcharging? Hard to say without more information. My immediate suggestion once you get the batteries replaced is to confirm that your charging system is supplying the correct voltage. If it is, then during the time the system is plugged in there shouldn't be a problem just leaving it do its thing. During the time you are in storage, you have to find out if there is any type of parasitic load on the batteries - both house and chassis - as a parasitic load will discharge them during that time and damage the batteries. It will also leave them subject to freezing should the temps drop. A charged battery will not freeze under normal circumstances but a discharged one will. If they freeze, the cases will likely crack and leak. If you leave your coach for 6 months not plugged in, at the least you should make sure that the batteries are fully charged, water topped off to the correct level, and then fully disconnected. Better is to pull the batteries and take them home with you where they can be put on a plug-in smart charger to keep them fresh and in good health. Hope this helps.

A big welcome from beautiful SE Wisconsin!

Some fuel stops also have a per-transaction fee in addition to the fee TSD takes. Depends somewhat on the specifics of the contract negotiated with TSD.

Precisely my point. The thread you're responding to is in the FMCA Feedback forum. Here's what the top of this forum reads, and it's really hard to understand how a forum can exist like this on the FMCA Forums if it's not being actively monitored by someone in leadership. It clearly is asking for feedback on ways to improve. If no one is monitoring these posts it's nothing more than an effort to placate members and not a real effort to obtain feedback. FMCA Feedback FMCA Feedback We welcome comments and questions about FMCA, including feedback on how we can improve or what we are doing well.

That's only 10% of the discounted amount, not of the sale price. If they save you $40, you pay TSD $4.0 which is still quite the saving.

The fact that the ads in Family RVing are largely now filled with corporate ads and rarely any RVs for sale might be an indicator that they are not meeting the needs of members wishing to advertise coaches or trailers for sale. I used to read them all the time, but not any more since they rarely have any private ads listing things for sale or wanted. Craigslist and RVTrader are open to the public, so they couldn't offer the degree of screening that a membership organization like FMCA can provide to its members. One huge advantage that FMCA has is the ability to keep things like classified ads limited to FMCA members only. It may not be something that our leadership would support, but it certainly seems like something which should at least be presented at he appropriate time. I'm still unsure why there is a forum titled FMCA Feedback if there is not an established path for the comments here to be viewed by FMCA leadership.

TSD has announced that their biggest discounts are with TA/Petro right now, so this would seem to be correct. At one time the discount at Loves was the bigger one.

This is the first I'm hearing about this. Was there an announcement in the magazine or somewhere? Seems like Dan had a pretty high-profile role in FMCA and that if he left and was replaced it might be something that members should learn about.

We're not talking about monitoring all the various forums here - just the one for FMCA feedback. Should take someone in the admin office about 5 minutes a week given how few postings there are in this forum.

Really all depends on what you have set up for a charger. Likely it would be okay for storage purposes assuming that they are all the same battery chemistry - wet cell, AGM, etc. I do something similar when in storage joining my generator's start battery to my house battery bank, all being maintained by my 4-stage smart charger. My chassis battery bank is 24v so it has its own smart charger connected. Trickle charge is somewhat of a troublesome term to me, as for some it means a charger capable of only able to put out a limited current flow and for others it means a charger only able to put out a limited voltage. The biggest factor in maintenance charging is to keep the voltage at the correct level so you don't boil your batteries but still maintain enough voltage to prevent deterioration while in storage. My charger/converter has a float charge of 13.2v which keeps things from deteriorating but is a low enough voltage as to not really consume much water at all. It goes up to 14.6v for 15 minutes a day to prevent sulfation over a long storage period. The batteries will not be pulling very much current at all during storage - only enough to make up for any parasitic drain on them from the few control panels still active in the coach. An alternative way to accomplish what you want is to install something like an Echo charger. These devices will take a small percentage of the current going to your house batteries and divert it to the chassis batteries whenever the house bank is charging. I've used one in the past and it worked well, but in the end there were too many moving pieces and places for failure so I ended up simplifying things by just combining my generator start battery and house battery bank while in storage.

Always good to check the app or daily price report before selecting a fuel stop. There are always going to be outliers that either don't participate or that have a much lower discount. If I know I'm going to be fueling during the day, I try to identify a few options for fueling along the route while I'm doing my start-of-the-day trip planning. To me it's worth the 5 or 10 minutes time if it is going to potentially save me $30 or $40.

I recently received the Shringrix 2-dose vaccine, and experiences something similar. After the first dose I had a sore arm and felt like I'd been hit by a truck with flu-like symptoms for a few days. It went away and then I felt okay. The second dose resulted in far less of the flu-like symptoms and only for about half a day. The sore arm though, that stuck with me quite severely for a couple of weeks. I was told the same thing - these are symptoms that my body's immune system is working to develop a response to the 'intruder'.

I agree that something could easily be rigged up using the two grooves across the top of the tank. If you have a small (1" or so) curb on each side of the tank to keep it from sliding, then the straps only need to be snug enough to keep it from bouncing upwards. Are you thinking of using 1" Pex tubing for the outlet of the freshwater tank? Not sure that it's necessary to go that large. The plumbing for my whole house is only fed with 3/4" copper pipes from the well, so using 1" for the water outlet on the tank would certainly be overkill. My 90+ gallon freshwater tank is connected to the bus with 1/2" copper pipes, and we've never had a problem running multiple plumbing fixtures at the same time.